Within the field of telecommunications, the rapid transfer of data is often degraded because of the inherent difficulties associated with moving a large amount of data over a given period of time. Compressing complex signals embodying such large amounts of data enables an increase to the amount of data moved over the same amount of time. Such data compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than a more direct (i.e., linear) representation would use. Data compression is implemented via the use of specific encoding schemes considered well known in the art such as, but not limited to, linear encoding, exponential encoding, and delta encoding. Data compression takes advantage of statistical redundancy found within most real-world data. As with any form of communication, compressed data communication only functions when both sender and receiver understand the encoding scheme. This typically requires an encoding mechanism and a decoding mechanism appropriately located within the communications link somewhere in the data path.
While data compression is often possible in telecommunications, some loss of signal fidelity inevitably occurs. Such signal losses using data compression are tolerated in view of the desirable reduction in costly resources such as disk space or connection bandwidth. Some data compression methods are reversible so that the original data can be reconstructed in their entirety (i.e., lossless data compression). Other such data compression methods accept some loss of data in order to achieve higher compression (i.e., lossy data compression). However, most data compression methods often also require lossy data compression). However, most data compression methods often also require significant information processing power that can also be resource intensive. Accordingly, designing any given data compression scheme will involve trade-offs among various factors including, but not limited to, compression capability, any amount of introduced distortion, delay constraints, and computational resource requirements.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an optimized method and apparatus for data compression within telecommunications that reduces undesirable trade-offs.